E3 2005: Radiata Stories

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Action! Graphics! Goats!

By Charles Onyett

Radiata Stories was very much playable at Square Enix's booth and featured a functional link system. The term "link" refers to a glowing line that appears and effectively "links" your party members together, setting them in various formations that can be mapped and toggled with the D-pad. Some of the formations, including box, circle and line, send the characters into the corresponding polygonal patterns. Circle and square formations seemed to present tactical advantages, allowing players to surround an enemy, while the line formation enabled your four onscreen characters to blast out a huge horizontal beam of energy, damaging all enemies in its way. It could be assumed that the other formations allowed for similar cooperative attack and defense tactics. If you get hit enough enemies are capable of breaking your line formations, knocking all of your characters on their backs.

Much like Star Ocean 3, the battles are played out entirely in real time, with a combo counter popping up in the upper left corner. You control Jack Russel (the Royal Radiata Knight, not the terrier) and slice your way through enemies with the help of your party members, whose behavioral patterns can be switched on the fly.

Even with headphones little could be made out of the audio soundtrack because of E3's ridiculous noise levels, but if they're anything like the visuals they'll be way above standard. This game is gorgeous. Those who played Vagrant Story for PSOne may recognize the lavishly armored character designs as familiar, while the backgrounds are something entirely different. From the castle carpets, floor, blazing torches and eerily glowing doors, the environments can be best described as a muted watercolor. It's not that the graphics jump out as eye-explodingly incredible like some of the recent PS3 demos, but they're easy on the eyes, seamless, smooth and full of detail.

According to Square Enix, Radiata Stories will feature over 150 recruitable characters. It's up to the player whether to recruit just a manageable few or try to seek them all out while contending with a continuing day/night cycle throughout which NPCs attend to their daily chores and routines.